URP Events presents Rent, Centennial Theatre, Nov.15-20 at 8 p.m. with 2 p.m. also on Nov. 20. Tickets $44/$36/$20 Preview Nov. 15: $28. For more info visit urp.ca.
The powerful rock musical Rent is set to consume the Centennial Theatre stage as URP Event Productions returns to the arena with the large scale drama.
This year is significant for the hit Broadway play, celebrating its 20th anniversary, and for the URP team, who are producing Rent after a seven-year break from the main stage at Centennial Theatre.
“URP, in terms of its bread and butter, is a special events company and we haven’t taken a break from that,” says director, Richard Berg. URP has remained active in the community by programming
West Vancouver’s Harmony Arts festival and doing studio shows for small audiences. Their last large scale performance was an original production of Disney’s High School Musical 2.
“The theatre side has always been a labour of love – My beginning is in theatre and I wanted to do that for as long as I could, but the shows were losing money.”
The financial reality caused URP to approach this year’s production slightly differently; they’ve shortened the musical’s run to only five days and Berg hopes that encourages more people to come see it.
Berg found no other scheduled upcoming performances in Vancouver for Rent, so he saw his chance to strike it off of his long to-do list.
“On a personal level it’s just a show that I dearly love myself and surprisingly over the years it was one we had never done.”
Passion packs a powerful punch in this production of Rent and Berg is excited to give these young actors the chance to perform the iconic theatre anthems that defined a period in Broadway history.
Many members of the cast graduated from Capilano University’s theatre program, Exit 22, including Ali Watson, Darren Adams, Kai Bradbury, and Synthia Yusuf.
“There’s a lot of conventions in it that push toward rock concert, you know, the band is very present and exposed and there’s a lot of moments where the cast just stands at the edge of the stage and sings at the audience in a very performance oriented way,” says Berg.
“There are a lot of moments that are exciting by virtue of having young talented performers give’r.”
The HIV/AIDS crisis in the late 1980’s serves as the backdrop to this poignant drama and despite the majority of the cast being in their mid-twenties, making them too young to have experienced the height of the pandemic, Berg says they have discussed the impact of this era at length.
“I remember friends of my parents being diagnosed and knowing that that meant that they would die in a year. That’s just not the reality now,” he says.
“It’s interesting, in such a short period of time the show’s really become a period piece. It’s like doing a period drama in a lot of ways, and we talked about that a lot a rehearsals.”
The story of ardent and young creatives struggling toward success maintains its timelessness, says Berg, referencing the original inspiration for the play, Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, which is set in the 19th century.
“People don’t die of consumption anymore but we still enjoy watching the original material – despite the fact that (we) can’t directly relate to having that disease either,” he said.
“I think that 20 years later, it’s just as relevant to be in love with someone you’re going to lose, or to not know if you’re going to have the same friends tomorrow that you have today, or to realize that it could all change in a heartbeat.”
Berg and the rest of the URP team are eager to return to their original main stage at the Centennial Theatre for their short run of Rent, showing from Nov. 15 to 20.
